November 25th, 2009
Dave Dickson
Outreach Worker, Downtown East side
Former Vancouver City Police Constable

Dave Dickson was born and raised around Vancouver; he left school early to go seek fortune pumping gas in Cache Creek. He held a number of different jobs over the years before going back to school, getting a Grade 12 degree and being accepted into the Vancouver Police in 1980.

He spent his entire career in the Downtown Eastside out of choice even after the Department tried to transfer him out in the early 90's. He became an advocate for the Youth and the Women that worked the Streets and from the year 2003-2008 received 8 or 9 different awards for Community Policing including an International Safety Award for a program that he and Inspector John McKay designed for Women in High risk occupations. He retired in 2005 but was contracted back as the Department's Sex Trade Liaison person.

He now works as an Outreach worker for Lookout Emergency shelter.

President and Chief Executive Officer of the British Columbia Rapid Transit Company which encompass the SkyTrain system and the West Coast Express commuter rail system. He is responsible for the operating assets exceeding $4.5 billion that cover much of Greater Vancouver and parts of the Fraser Valley.

Doug has a strong private sector background in leading significant change to achieve top performance in both the private and public sectors including multi-national organizations, such as Shell Canada and Starbucks Coffee.

During his current tenure operating the Vancouver region’s urban passenger rail systems, he has significantly improved fiscal, operating performance and cost recovery. SkyTrain has reduced its costs by many millions of dollars while now carrying over 75 million riders per year and achieving an operating cost recovery of over 104%, unique among transit operations. West Coast Express has improved its operating cost recovery by well over 100% to 92.6% in 2008 or one of the elite top performers in North America.

Doug’s background includes; strategic planning, finance, mergers and divestitures, operations, asset management, marketing, distribution and real estate.

In addition to President/CEO of British Columbia Rapid Transit Company, Doug was the leader responsible for the development and defence of the transportation plan with the International Olympic Committee during the successful Vancouver 2010 Olympic bid phase. He was the Chairman of the Transportation Advisory Committee for 2010 Olympic Games and now is responsible for the Spectator and Workforce transportation for the Metro Vancouver area and TransLink’s strategic planning and all operations for the Olympic and Paralympic Games. He is the co-founder and past CEO with the HSBC Basketball Classic, now the largest High School tournament in North America. He does personal mentoring with at risk youth.

He is a graduate from the CEO program at the Kellogg School of Business.

Malcolm Hunter is President and Chief Operating Officer of Deeley Harley-Davidson Canada, the exclusive Canadian distributor of Harley-Davidson® .

As a graduate of Simon Fraser University’s Economic in Commerce Department, Malcolm brought a background of finance, accounting and business systems to the company. Malcolm is also a graduate of Queen’s University Executive Program and the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, Advanced Management Program.

One of Mr. Hunter’s most impressive accomplishment is through Deeley Harley-Davidson Canada earning the prestigious Canada’s 50 Best Managed Companies award for fourteen consecutive years (1995-2008). This award program, sponsored by Deloitte & Touche, Queen’s School of Business, CIBC Commercial Banking and the National Post, inducted Deeley Harley-Davidson Canada into the 50 Best Platinum Club in December 2003 in recognition of this outstanding achievement. Malcolm also sits on a number of committees with the Harley-Davidson Motor Company in the United States.

Malcolm is a member of the Rotary Club of Vancouver, he is past Chair of the Vancouver Community College Foundation Board, and also the past Chair of the Board of Directors of the Muscular Dystrophy Association of Canada, The Foundation for Fighting Blindness (formerly the RP Foundation) and he is the Past President and Director of the Hollyburn Country Club and Past President of the BC Safety Council.

Dr. David Schreck is the secretary and treasurer of the "No BC-STV Campaign Society" currently working to defeat the proposal to change how MLAs are elected, and most probably the subject of his talk and our debate this evening.

David has had a long and varied career in BC politics. He was the NDP MLA for North Vancouver-Lonsdale from 1991 to 1996; he was an active member of the B.C. Legislature's Public Accounts Committee, served on the Parliamentary Reform Committee and on the Health and Social Services Committee, and served as Parliamentary Secretary to the Premier and to the Minister of Employment and Investment. He also was a special advisor to the Premier twice from 1998 to 2001, for both Clark and Dosanjh.

Prior to being elected David managed one of BC's largest dental insurers for ten years. He was involved with community management of social services in the 70s as chief executive officer of the Vancouver Resources Board, and was later involved in putting together B.C.'s first Pharmacare program. He currently works as an economic and management consultant, and as a political commentator, online and on the radio station CFAX in Victoria and posing questions on Vaughn Palmer's Voice of BC cable show. Visit his web site at www.strategicthoughts.com.

David Schreck has a BA in Economics from Grinnell College (Iowa), and a Ph.D. in Economics from the University of British Columbia.

Don Cayo is a journalist with a penchant for analysis and passion for fair play. He came to the Vancouver Sun eight years ago as editorial page editor, and four years ago switched to column writing.

His beat is loosely defined. It includes those areas — taxation, regulation and much more — where government policies and business practices intersect. Plus stewardship issues involving how well we take care of public money, public resources and/or each other. Plus mass poverty and international development issues. Plus other things that catch his fancy. His main qualification, he says, is a low threshold of outrage. This is manifest in his championing of causes that range from reining in over-zealous tax collectors, to protecting suckers from usurious lenders, to helping the destitute in more than two dozen dirt-poor countries.

Cayo has has spent all his adult life in journalism or related fields. For five years he taught journalism, and for two years he ran a business-funded think-tank in Atlantic Canada. Over his career he has won more than two dozen fellowships or other prizes. He now serves as volunteer project leader for Jack Webster Foundation’s Seeing the World Through New Eyes program, which gives young or beginning B.C journalists their first chance to report on mass poverty.

Visit Cayo's blogs:
Globalization: For Better or Worse
Taxing Issues

Brian Day is a physician and the 2007-2008 president of the Canadian Medical Association. He is known as Dr. Profit by opponents and Dr. Prophet by supporters for his advocacy of a role for private health care.

Day was raised in Toxteth, a working-class area, of post-war Liverpool, England. He was one of five children in a family with strong Labour views. Both his mother and father were socialists. The area could be tough. He has a permanent scar on a finger from a knife fight when he was 10 years old. His father, a pharmacist, was killed in the mid-80s by a hooligans looking for drugs. He was one of very few students from his elementary school who went to university. Day attended the Liverpool Institute, the same high school as Paul McCartney and George Harrison.

He obtained post-graduate qualifications in Britain, in both internal medicine and general surgery, and in 1978 completed his training and a M.Sc. degree at UBC. In 1979, Day received the Canadian Orthopaedic Association's Edouard Samson Award, for outstanding orthopaedic research in Canada. Following a fellowship in traumatology, in Basel, Switzerland, Oxford, and Los Angeles, he began practice at the Vancouver General Hospital. After starting in trauma, he developed an interest and expertise in orthopaedic sports medicine and arthroscopy. As an orthopedic surgeon, he earned an international reputation for performing arthroscopic surgery on knees, shoulders and elbows. Day is regarded as being instrumental in the introduction of arthroscopic joint surgery in Canada.

In 1997, Day founded Cambie Surgery Centre, a for-profit Vancouver hospital. Day is the facility's medical director and is one of over 40 shareholders. The centre operates outside Canada's publicly-funded health care system and sees about 5,000 patients a year. It caters mainly to people who have third-party insurance for their operations and has also been controversial for allowing patients waiting for surgeries in the public system to "jump the queue." (excerpted from Wikipedia)

 

Bob maintains relationships with major developers throughout Canada and the United States specializing in the pre-sales of condominium developments. He has played a key role in many of Vancouver’s major development projects including Woodward’s, Yaletown Park, and the 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Athletes’ Village (Millennium Water).

Bob has been marketing residential real estate for over 33 years. Since 2006, Rennie Marketing Systems has consistently maintained total sales in dollar volume exceeding $1 billion per year.

Bob’s dedication to the community and various charities has earned him a Queen’s Golden Jubilee Medal in 2002. His commitment to his passion for art has also allowed him to sit on the acquisitions board of the Tate Museum of Modern Art in London as well as the Deans Advisory Board to the Faculty of Arts at UBC.

Earlier this year, Bob was presented with an Honorary Doctorate from the Emily Carr University of Art and Design.

http://www.rennie.com/rms/

Mr. Heier is the founder and Chairman of Trinidad Energy Services. Mr. Heier also held the position of Chief Executive Officer of Trinidad or its predecessor from June 1998 until January of 2008. He is a journeyman millwright and has been involved in the oil and gas industry in Western Canada since 1976. Mr. Heier played a key role in the growth of a family group of companies from that time until early 2000. At its peak activity level in 1997, this group of companies had combined revenues in excess of $50 million and employed just fewer than 400 people throughout western Canada.

Mr. Heier also served as Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of Trinity Energy from 1987 to 1998. Trinity Energy Ltd. grew from 25 barrels of oil per day to an average of over 2,000 barrels of oil per day making it one of the largest private independent oil and gas producers in the Province of Saskatchewan. During this same time frame, Trinity Energy Ltd. developed and sold over $75 million worth of oil and gas assets. Trinity Energy Ltd. became Trinity Energy Inc. in 1998 and went on to find one of the largest concentrated deposits of coal bed methane in the plains region in Alberta. This land position was successfully joint ventured with Nexen Canada in 2000. Trinity Energy Inc. operated as a public non-trading entity with approximately 135 shareholders.

Warren Buckley returns to the helm of PavCo as President and CEO following a six-year term as the CEO of Suntec Singapore, International Convention and Exhibition Center.

Prior to his post overseas, he had worked with the PavCo organization for 20 years, initially as Sales Manager at BC Place and then through various senior positions at PavCo culminating to his promotion as President and CEO in the mid-90s. Warren has taught facility management at industry schools in West Virginia and Australia.

The former Chairman of the World Council of Venue Management, he is also past Director of the Asia Pacific Exhibition and Convention Council and past Board Director for the International Association of Convention Centres.

Brendan McLeod has been Vancouver's SLAM poetry Champion, the Canadian SLAM poetry champion, and finished second at the 2005 World SLAM championships, held in Holland. As a novelist, he beat out over 500 original entries to win the 2006 International 3 Day Novel Contest for his book, "The Convictions of Leonard McKinley". He has performed all over the world, at over 200 poetry readings, and is a touring member of The Fugitives spoken word and music troupe.
Brendan is a high energy storyteller equally at home with social and political commentary, family histrionics, surreal love poems, obscure adventure stories, and powerful personal stories. He runs the gamut of performance poetry, making him an effective live performer and an artist well equipped for collaboration.
He has an MA in Philosophy from the University of Waterloo. See more at: http://www.brendanmcleod.ca/

 

Michael Matthew McGee, more commonly known as Mighty Mike McGee is an American slam poet. Born in Fort Campbell, Kentucky, in 1976 McGee is the oldest of 8 children from several marriages. McGee was born with the neural tube defect spina bifida and was never expected to walk or talk as an infant. However, his case of spina bifida is relatively mild, and McGee has been able to live a relatively normal life.
Mike McGee is an international spoken word artist, writer, performer, speaker, slam poet and comic. He has performed in thousands of venues all over North America, and was one of the first Americans ever to perform poetry at the University la Sorbonne in Paris, France. McGee began performing comedy and poetry to audiences at home in San Jose, California in 1998.
In 2003, McGee won the coveted National Poetry Slam Individual Grand Championship, besting over 300 nationally ranked poetry slammers. He has since toured over 300,000 miles throughout the United States and Canada where fellow National Poetry Slam Indy Champ, Shane Koyczan and beat-boxer poet extraordinaire C.R. Avery (of Vancouver, B.C.) joined him to form the group Tons of Fun University in 2004. They have since headlined music festivals across Canada, bringing their unique blend of poetry-laden “talk rock” to massive audiences all over the great north. In 2006, McGee became the first person to win two separate individual titles by being crowned the 2006 Individual World Poetry Slam Champion, besting over 70 of the world’s best ranked slam poets. His “stand-up poetry” has been written about in Writer’s Digest magazine, and been featured on NPR, HBO and CBC. http://www.mikemcgee.net/

RC Weslowski has been a clown mouth full of bologna in the Vancouver Poetry Scene since 1998. As a performer RC is a 5 time member of the Vancouver Poetry Slam Team and has performed at Festival across Canada, including The Calgary International Poetry Festival, The Winnipeg Writer's Festival, The Saskatchewan Festival of Words, The Vancouver Folk Festival, The Vancouver Storytelling Fesival, Music West, The Canadian Festival of Spoken Word. RC has also performed his poetry on the Eiffel Tower while snorting the remains of Orson Welles and along the Rhine River in Germany while debating Schopenhauer with a schnauser.
As an event organizer RC Weslowski was the Artistic Director for the 2005 Canadian Festival of Spoken Word and the Publicity Coordinator for the 2007 Individual World Poetry Slam. RC is the current President of Vancouver Poetry House and he is one of the main people making the Vancouver Poetry Slam run. The VPS is Canada's longest running poetry slam, now in it's 11th year. He is also on the board of the Spoken Word Arts Network (SWAN).

 

May 28^th, 2008
Hon. William (Bill) Kitchen,
Provincial Court Judge

By way of a CV Judge William Kitchen received his law degree from the University British Columbia 1971 and then studied at the London School of Economics in 1972/1973.

Judge Kitchen return to Canada and then work for Law Reform Commission for 1973/1974. Judge Kitchen and then joined the Vancouver Prosecutor's Office and practiced as a Crown Prosecutor in 1975. Judge Kitchen joined the Defense bar and practiced as a criminal Defense attorney during the period 1975-1986. Judge Kitchen was appointed as a Judge of the Provincial Court of British Columbia in 1986 and has adjudicated numerous criminal matters at 222 Main St to date. Judge Kitchen acted as the Administrative Judge at 222 Main St. during 2003-2007.

Judge Kitchen was raised in the downtown Eastside and he has over 60 years of experience with the changes that have occurred, both to the Vancouver Eastside and the justice system, and will provide his insight into that setting and their respective issues.

 

April 30 ^th, 2008
Peter Ladner ,
Councillor, City of Vancouver

Councillor Peter Ladner was first elected to Vancouver City Council in 2002 and re-elected in 2005. Councillor Ladner is vice president and part owner of the Business in Vancouver Media Group, which he co-founded by establishing the award-winning Business in Vancouver weekly newspaper in 1989. He has more than 35 years of journalistic experience in print, radio and television and is a frequent speaker on business and community issues.

His community and business experience includes participation in the Vancouver City Planning Commission and the Capital Campaign for the Vancouver Public Library. He has also served on the boards of Leadership Vancouver, International Centre for Sustainable Cities, The UBC Alumni Association, New Media BC, the Forum for Women Entrepreneurs and the international Association of Area Business Publications.

He is the Honorary Chair of the Subaru Vancouver International Half-Iron and Sprint Triathlon.

His current local and regional appointments include:

• Vice-Chair, Metro Vancouver board
• Vice-Chair, Metro Vancouver Sustainable Region Initiative
• Member, Metro Vancouver Waste Committee
• Chair, Vancouver Standing Committee on City Services and Budgets
• Member, Vancouver Standing Committee on Transportation and Traffic
• Member, Vancouver Standing Committee on Planning and Environment
• Member, Vancouver Economic Development Commission
• Council Liaison, Food Policy Council

Councillor Ladner is a fourth generation British Columbian. The town of Ladner is named after his great-grandfather. He lives in Kitsilano with his wife, Erica. They have four children ranging in age from 19 to 28. He is a long-time commuter cyclist as well as a keen runner, skier, kayaker and singer. He holds his age-group record for the 50 km Knee-Knackering North Shore Trail Run.

March 26^th, 2008
Sam Sullivan,
Mayor of the City of Vancouver

Since accepting the Olympic Flag at the closing ceremony of the 2006 Olympic Winter Games, Sam Sullivan has become one of the world’s most recognized mayors.

Mayor Sullivan is a recipient of the nation’s highest honour, the Order of Canada, for his community service on behalf of marginalized people. He is the founder of six non-profit organizations that have improved the lives of thousands of North Americans with disabilities.

After being elected to Vancouver City Council in 1993, Sullivan served as a Councillor for 12 years. He was elected Mayor in November 2005.

Among the initiatives he has introduced is EcoDensity, an innovative policy to reduce the City’s impact on the environment, reduce housing prices and improve the vitality of neighbourhoods through high quality densification. The Mayor has also introduced Project Civil City (PDF, 1.7Mb), a broad initiative aimed at improving public order and civility on Vancouver streets which includes four key goals to significantly reduce homelessness and incidences of crime and public disorder in the City by 2010.

A believer in life-long learning, Mayor Sullivan has devoted himself to studying a broad range of topics. He obtained a Business Administration degree from Simon Fraser University and has also taught himself the basics of several languages including Cantonese.

He is an avid sailor using a specially designed boat he helped to create, and also enjoys hiking in the Coast and Rocky Mountains using an assistive device he co-invented.

Mayor Sullivan’s achievements are noteworthy due to the fact that they were accomplished since he became a quadriplegic after breaking his neck in a skiing accident at the age of 19.

February 27^th, 2008
David Baines,
Reporter and columnist, Vancouver Sun

David Baines has been working as a reporter and columnist with The Vancouver Sun for the past 22 years. His beat is the Vancouver stock market and white-collar crime in general. His stories not only focus on perpetrators, but also professional facilitators such as lawyers, accountants and geologists, and the regulatory bodies that are supposed to be protecting the public interest. He has been sued 18 times, none successfully.

He has won four National Newspaper Awards, second highest in Canadian history.

David Baines earned his BA from Queen's and his MBA from Western.

 

January 30^th, 2008
Adrian Dix, MLA,
Vancouver Kingsway

Adrian Dix was elected as the MLA for Vancouver Kingsway on May 17, 2005. Adrian is the Opposition Caucus Deputy House Leader, and serves as Opposition Critic for Health. Adrian has extensive experience as a non-profit director, education community leader, government strategist and media commentator.
Prior to the 2005 election, Adrian travelled the province for five years as Executive Director of Canadian Parents for French - BC & Yukon Branch, a non-profit organization promoting language education. Adrian is a commentator on public policy whose regular columns were published in the Victoria Times-Colonist and The Source, a Vancouver multicultural newspaper. Adrian also served as the Chief of Staff to Premier Glen Clark from 1996 to 1999.

Adrian grew up in Vancouver, graduated from University of British Columbia and lives in the Collingwood neighbourhood.

Here's what the press has to say about our next guest:

"the most effective NDP MLA" Keith Baldrey, Global TV.

"Adrian Dix, the most effective member of the Opposition shadow cabinet, was shifting to health. He'd been devastatingly effective in his previous role as critic for children and family development. His almost-daily exposés led to a shakeup in the ministry and an independent review by Ted Hughes -- whose findings ultimately embarrassed the premier himself."Vaughn Palmer, Vancouver Sun.

"James' most significant change was to shift Adrian Dix from children and families critic to health. Dix was extraordinarily effective. There are two goals for critics, or there should be. They certainly want to score points for their side and make the other guys look bad. But they also have a chance to produce meaningful improvements in the way government works. Dix's efforts highlighted the Liberals' failures in the children's ministry. They also produced Ted Hughes' review of the ministry, the creation of an independent advocate for children and an overhaul of ministry management. By moving him to health, James confirms that's going to be an NDP priority." Paul Willcocks, Victoria Times-Colonist

November 28, 2007
Dr. Gail Anderson,
Forensic Entomologist, SFU

Dr. Anderson graduated from Manchester University with a Bachelor of Science degree in Zoology. She then pursued a Masters degree and a PhD in Pest Management at SFU. Today, Dr. Anderson is an associate professor in the Criminology department at SFU. You might be asking yourself how her degrees in Biology transfer to a professorship in criminology. The answer lies in Dr. Anderson's innovative application of her training in entomology. One of her major research interests is in forensic entomology, which is the use of insects in death investigations. Dr. Anderson is one of two full-time forensic entomologists in Canada (the second being a former student). Her work has been featured on several television programs, including "Go Deep", "Journeys," "Forbidden Places" and "The Nature of Things".

Dr. Anderson is internationally known for her pioneering work. She actively handles forensic death cases for the RCMP and city police with whom she has been involved in over 130 homicide investigations. Dr. Anderson uses insects to determine the elapsed time since death; information that is often vital to the successful resolution of murder cases. Dr. Anderson is developing a canada-wide database on the habits of flesh-eating insects, a tool which has been a great help to forensic scientists in pinpointing both the time and cause of death. She was also involved in establishing one of the first North American labs founded solely to refine the ways that insect biology can be used to help solve crimes.

In 1995, Dr. Anderson was awarded the Simon Fraser University Alumni Association Outstanding Alumni Award for Academic Achievement. In March of 2001, she was named one of six leading international innovators in the field of crime and punishment by TIME Magazine.

October 2007: Roger Woodhead, Ph.D, P.Eng.
Technical Director, Canada Line

Roger Woodhead has worked for both consulting engineering and construction companies for the past 30 years. He was Chief Engineer with Dillingham Construction when it was one of the largest construction companies in BC. From 1990 to 1995 he worked in Newfoundland for the design/build contractor on the $1.5 billion Hibernia Gravity Base Structure (GBS). Roger returned to Vancouver in 1995 and since then has worked on an eclectic mix of projects including:

• Design Manager and Project Director for SNC-Lavalin on a $50 million cut and cover tunnel in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
• Project Construction Engineer for three “Sinking Caissons” and several sheet piled excavations for conveyor tunnels at Vancouver Wharves.
• Quality Systems Manager on the $1.2 billion SkyTrain Millennium Line.

Roger is a P.Eng. in BC, a structural P.E. in Washington and an Internationally registered Lead Quality Auditor. He is an Adjunct Professor in Construction Management at UBC. He is also a tutor for the University of Bath M Sc in Construction Management which is being delivered in North American by BCIT. He was selected by the Canadian Society for Civil Engineering to present its National Lecture Tour in 1997-8. In 2007 the American Concrete Institute presented him with its Construction Award for the best paper published in 2006.

He is currently Technical Director for SNC Lavalin Inc. the Engineering Procurement and Construction Contractor for the Canada Line Project. In this role he is responsible for overseeing all engineering and quality management on the $1.9 billion Public Private Partnership which is presently the largest infrastructure project in Canada.